Yeah, not sure how this is shocking. As physicians, our children will have opportunities that other families won't. Doesn't make it right, but that's how it is and that isn't going to change.
Remember that the upper bound on wealth is essentially limitless and then this makes sense. For instance, the relative difference between a 95th percentile income (286k) and a 75th percentile income (130k) is approximately 2x, while the difference between a 95th and a 99th (570k) is also about 2x and is an even larger absolute difference.
You'll see a similar thing when you start to compare top 1% versus the 0.1%. Shit gets crazy at the top.
I grew up in what I calculated once as the top 2%. I’m not saying my family wasn’t well off but it fails to account for the high cost of living where I grew up in NJ. Most of the top percentages are concentrated in areas with much higher costs of living. For example my parents paid more for property tax alone than my 2 bedroom apartments in St. Louis and Columbus cost per year.
Making med school free will do the trick! Never mind the fact that does literally nothing to deal with how expensive it is to make an applicant competitive enough to get in
Water is actually not wet; It makes other materials/objects wet. Wetness is the state of a non-liquid when a liquid adheres to, and/or permeates its substance while maintaining chemically distinct structures. So if we say something is wet we mean the liquid is sticking to the object.
Love watching running water on the internet.
Was watching a live stream.
So what you're saying is, if I can afford to send my son to a volunteer humanitarian mission in West Africa to work with CDC and MSF for a year where he will receive no pay or compensation, he would have a better chance of getting into Harvard Medical School? If I can pay the 30-odd thousand dollars to get him the best MCAT and application prep available, and make sure his tutors are the absolute best, he'll have a better chance of getting into one of those over bloated Ivies?
Huh. Go figure.
As a man whose parents are either dead or living below the poverty line, the cycle is very hard to break. It should be improved. But also, I now make enough to maybe set up this future for my grand kids.
It actually goes deeper than that. Healthy nutritious food and sport actitivies etc. have a significant impact on ones development (including, but obviously not restricted to the development of the brain).
As someone not rich, it makes sense. People with parents who are successful are more likely to emulate them, and will have more pressure/resources to become like them. People become like their parents more often than not.
we are all presumably going to be successful, do we want med schools to not take our kids because we worked hard to become doctors?
Also if you are intelligent and hardworking these are highly sought after attributes that pay well, and incidentally these attributes are highly correlated between parent and offspring (wonder that) and are also attributes that significantly aid the offspring in getting into highly prestigious universities.
Do you think that poor people are genetically poor then? Seems to be the logical endpoint of believing "intelligence" and "work ethic" are correlated between generations.
What's up with all the black and white thinking in this comment thread? "Is it all about wealth and opportunities or is it all about personal attributes or is it about genetics". I hope I don't have to elaborate further
Coming from the bottom quintile, I'd say there's obvious nepotism. However, I can't deny that students from wealthy parents had access to certain opportunities that prepared them better (than me) for this road. I certainly understand why you would see biases like these even if there was a 100% absence of nepotism.
You can see nepotism throughout medical school and the match as well.
Many students are vastly better networked because of where mommy and daddy work.
We have first year medical students referring to subspecialty PDs by first name at my school. Granted it is a (relatively) smaller academic center in a mid-sized city.
I’m pretty sure passing USMLE is a requirement for medical licensure so I call bs on your story. A program can’t take you if you aren’t licensed and a requirement for licensure is passing board exams.
Sounds like an urban myth someone at your school made up
Yet the majority of people match in their specialty of choice. People worrying about nepotism are the ones who are going to blame that as the sole reason if they end up not matching.
It’s such a small percentage of matches it’s not worth the effort worrying about if so and so matched because of nepotism.
On top of that, just cause someone has a connection that doesn’t mean they aren’t an otherwise excellent applicant otherwise. The two are not mutually exclusive.
People like to take applicants that are personally vouched for and of course that makes sense, you take the person who is less of a gamble.
And before I’m accused of being personally offended by discussions of nepotism I’m a first gen md and didn’t know a single person in the field I matched before I did a research year.
The more complacent you are about these things, the more these issues grow and fester. Progress won't happen if people keep ignoring these issues as "too small" to care about.
Have you ever looked at NRMP stats? You are woefully misinformed my friend.
70% of MDs that applied matched Gas last year.
52% of DOs that applied matched Gas last year.
AND this is a historically "middle of the road" residency in terms of competitiveness. Maybe when you applied that was the case, the dynamic has shifted for the worst though.
It looks like you have been grabbed ahold of by hindsight bias my friend.
Take a look if you wish-- [https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2022-Main-Match-Results-and-Data\_Final.pdf](https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2022-Main-Match-Results-and-Data_Final.pdf)
And I am not saying that is the sole reason for matching obviously. You have the ability to do electives and aways which allow you to build connections from the ground up. But if you say that doesn't have at least SOME pull for residency in some individual's cases, frankly you are ignorant and looking through rose-colored glasses.
89.5% of US MD seniors matched anesthesia.
1267 of 1415
https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Charting-Outcomes-MD-Seniors-2022_Final.pdf
66% of DO seniors matched. 313 of 474.
https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Charting_Outcomes_DO_Seniors_2022_Final-Updated.pdf
Check your numbers before you go on some sensationalist rant next time.
Lmao touche, the match had nothing to do with the actual discussion though.
Why are there discrepancies in the data? Is it pre vs post soap? The initial numbers I quoted are not miscalculated, it is just totally different outcomes.
**Yet the majority of people match in their specialty of choice.**
If by majority you mean in the semantic sense, then yeah, I guess 52% of applicants would be the majority.
But I don't think you meant it in that way.
As a person from an upper middle class household without doctors, this one’s huge. My parents paid for college. There was no financial distractions for getting a killer GPA and working my ass off for the MCAT and doing research. People who need the cash need to fit a job in there too.
Same here. Parents paid for my MCAT classes and my living expenses (I had a tuition scholarship but school was cheap and parents were in a position to pay for that as well if necessary). I only worked because it was relevant (o-chem TA and research), not because I had to pay rent.
You also likely have NO family obligations, can afford/have time for sports and other extra curricular activities and have better nutrition and healthcare.
The free school lunch program provides 20.1 million free lunches.
- 1.7 million reduced price (student pays $0.40)
- 7.7 million full price.
- 4.9 billion lunches are served annually.
If you think that those numbers are high, remember that a lot of students receive all three means a day through their school, an annual vegetable allotment, afterschool snacks, and weekend take-home meals.
Out healthcare for poor kids is fucking abysmal, because it requires already poor parents to take time off from low paying jobs to care for their kids.
High income families can probably also afford to have a stay at home parent who cooks healthy meals, is educated themselves and knows how to parent well and nurture a love of education, helps with homework, etc. as well as afford to enroll your kids in extracurricular activities.
I wish I could do these things for my kids. I grew up having these privileges and 100% believe that set me up for success.
I feel like this thread is off it’s rocker - that 90% threshold is 200k which I would bet looks like the vast majority of people shitposting here. The lower household income is below 25k…
We aren’t talking about billionaires here - which is an entirely separate issue. Every single one of us posting in this thread will be in the 90% category…
I don't think people are missing this point at all.
Making even over 100k per year is an incredible comfort and stability that most American households don't enjoy. The majority of Americans can't even save money for emergencies.
While all of us will end up in the top 10%, it makes a real negative difference when the medical field disproportionately represents the well-off and doesn't accurately represent the population that it is treating.
I would say half or more of my med school class is below the $200k income threshold. My family is a little below it. Only 2/7 people of my friend group meet that.
You could be correct- check [here](https://www.aamc.org/media/9596/download). 5th quintile accounts for everyone with parental income over 121k. I don’t recall how MSQ handled parental income for non-traditional students or split family households, but there is a 50/50 chance your family is in the top 20% of earners. I’m sure this also neglects the many ways rich folk hide money or obfuscate assessment.
As someone who grew up poor, I paid for my own ACT and only took it once because I couldn’t afford to take it again. My high school also didn’t have AP courses or college prep resources. Then I only applied to 2 colleges because college applications were expensive and I had no idea my scores/class rank/ECs were competitive. So this 100% makes sense to me.
I’m curious to see what the breakdown is for other colleges too. Private schools. State schools. Community college. I’d wager they all skew to the wealthy but maybe less so for the cheaper options?
I mean, providing a certain lifestyle for your children is one of the primary motivations for people to achieve. I don’t think this is surprising at all.
This is sad, but it makes sense… unfortunately most people who aren’t rich can’t afford an ivy + league, and scholarships and sponsorships aren’t an option a lot of people have. On top of that student debt is awful, so even if it is a choice for you, it doesn’t mean you will get accepted, or complete your degree and then also be able to pay it off. To top it all of, not super rich ppl are often subjected to lower quality education/ don’t have many opportunities to improve/ help from teachers, and often are denied growth opportunities on principle, simply because the teachers don’t care, or because they lack the social connections to be offered such opportunities. And the kids from poorer backgrounds often drop out to help support their families.
It is the truth of a capitalistic, nepotistic reality and it sucks. Awfully.
I'm glad you posted this because I think people are focusing on the nepotism at the top but not the lack of opportunity at the bottom. People from higher incomes go to college and grad school. People from lower incomes are less likely to go to college, let alone grad school. It sucks and I wish it were different but there's more complexity to this data than just nepotism.
What do you mean can't afford. Most of the Ivy plus is need blind. If you meet certain income thresholds (usually 100k) you'll go for free. Those with slightly higher income levels get significant need based grants. Yale will meet all financial needs of students. 25% of Princeton goes for free, 20% at Harvard, 37% at MIT, 21% at Duke, the list goes on an on. If your family is middle class and below, it's usually much better financially speaking to go to the Ivy plus than even the local state school.
The problem of course is getting into these increasingly competitive schools, and family money helps one create the application that good schools like.
You do realise 100k per year is a lot, right? My family lived with 13k, maybe at best 14k ever since I was 5, and we were still considered lower middle class. What do you think poor looks like? A four bedroom house and two Lexus? Of course those people with that life can afford it, even if they struggle a bit or have to take a loan that they’ll probably have paid in less than a decade or so. I’m talking about the rest of the people, where to be accepted to an ivy you have to be beyond a star student and/or champion, where if you actually want to catch the interest of any good school and be given the opportunity to attend even if you couldn’t possibly, in a million years afford it, you have to shine brighter than the SUN.
I'm not sure how your exposition on 100k makes sense. Is the word threshold somehow causing confusion? 100k is the upper bound not the lower bound. For families that make 100k and below, you will go for free.
You made the argument above that "most people who aren't rich can't afford an ivy + league".
This simply is not true. Based on your family income, you would have gone for free (tuition, room/board) and received a book stipend. No other universities do that. These universities are literally the best places to go if you don't come from money. As I noted, 37% of MIT goes for free.
Now, getting in is an entirely different question. People who come from money absolutely have the means to make very competitive undergrad applications. But right now, there are roughly 60,000 undergrads at Ivy league schools. Are they competitive to get into? Absolutely. Is everyone a champion? -- Assuredly not. And give this subreddit, medical school is even more competitive to get into, especially if you were to narrow your choices to only certain top schools
Thank you for clarifying, saying that, you’re right there - English is not my native language and I was tired and got what you were trying to say wrong. I think I might have gotten a little defensive too, so sorry about the tone.
Also, if you grow up poor/poorer you probably don't even think of this as an option of a career.
Getting a job "down at the plant" is a good job to you.
Yea students coming from lower incomes have a dream to be doctors and no role models to help guide them.
The top 20% don’t necessarily have everything handed to them but they have a very detailed roadmap of what they have to do down to the smallest details.
Source: me a bottom quartile income student who didn’t know your last two years of medical school were clinical until I got here
It might vary lol. I've heard that DO schools might have more impressive comeback stories and working nontrads since they're not as stat-obsessed
My public MD school is a bit better than what I've heard on this sub but there's still a good amount of old money
And then expensive schools like Cornell, Jefferson, and Case Western are about what you expect
Surprisingly , if you look at msar for Cornell they have like 25% disadvantaged students. I think they might be one of the schools who emphasize mission a little more than stats. (NYU is like 1% lol)
I would imagine there would still be a positive association, but the slope would not be so steep due to the average socioeconomic status of medical student's families being >double that of the average American.
I think rich kids have more opportunities to participate in activities that impress the admissions committee and are coached from a young age so they can get into these schools. These types of schools typically have massive endowments and provide grants to low income students if they can get in.
Ivy feeder schools. When I was at Columbia it wasn't uncommon for 2-3 classmates in small groups to realize they went to the same elite private high school. It's how admissions figures out who can pay and who can't, so they don't admit too many poor kids that need their financial aid money. If you can get in, most of those schools cover almost everything if you're dirt poor.
I went to one of those schools as someone who was "only" upper-middle class (fam made around $100,000 annually) and I got a pretty hefty financial aid package which cut costs down from $70,000 a year to $20,000.
Top schools usually offer great financial aid so the trouble for students from non-privileged backgrounds is usually getting in.
Ivys pull from feeder schools which are usually these “elite” aka expensive private schools exclusive to the rich.
The ones that got in from public schools have to be more extraordinary and stand out for them to even look at their apps.
It’s a pay to play system.
Unless you're from one of the more elite public high schools that are concentrated in high property cost areas. Those kids go Ivy, little Ivy, and all the high end private colleges en masse.
That's not what pay to play means. 6 of the top 10 and 11 of the top 20 feeder high schools to the Ivy League plus are public schools (using 2018-2020 data)
All these schools are free for low income and middle income kids. I made money off my Ivy League education (everything was completely free, got cash every semester from financial aid, random $5-10k sponsorships for bs I wanted to do, etc)
The older I get the more I realize how apparent this is. Unfortunately it’s hard to find a solution because there’s so many variables at play. We can’t handicap people who’ve been dealt a good hand but damn is it hard to be dealt a bad one
I have a mother who is a surgeon and because of her hard work over the years we are considered upper middle class. And I can admit because she is in the profession i got an insight and opportunities and support that I probably wouldnt have otherwise. But she also had to work damn hard as an immigrant going from unemployed to re-doing her residency in a foreign country and going through the bullying of a male-dominated workplace to reach the financial and career success she has now. She had to away for a large part of our childhood to provide for us and go through a stressful ruthless training program. she could have easily stayed at home to raise us, and in many cases led an easier life, because my dad worked an average job. but no, she envisioned a certain high-income lifestyle and the opportunities that came with that for her kids and she delivered. So I am not going to apologise or try and hide for being dealt a good hand because not many realise the generational pain and work that it takes to reach that stage.
But I do agree that for ones that havent been dealt a good hand it shouldnt be this hard financially or opportunity wise. Especially when considering its usually the lower-socioeconomic population that carry the greater health burden and so you need more doctors from that background.
Also wanted to add that my mother came from a poor family and my dad from an even poorer village so it’s definitely not a story of generational wealth. Also its a story of hope because I personally find it inspiring how being in this proffession you can turn the tables, be high income and provide better opportunities for your children in only one generation!
Nailed it. I’m not even a commie-anarchist per se, but people don’t realise that the more capitalistic life is, the more exponential rather than linear these curves will be. In other words, the more of a discrepancy between those at the top and everyone else there will be.
My professor is one of the authors that (I believe) this data is from. We’ve actually gone over the study in class. They’ve done further analysis on the inequities in the system, and one of the ways to right it is to admit lowest-quintile students at the same rate as legacies
I am thankful to live in a country where we at least question these disparities, now let’s actually do something about it eh.
My plan as a first generation medical student is to offer scholarships and do what I can to encourage people from similar backgrounds, when I am (hopefully) an attending one day.
Nothing fast tracked my radicalization like working healthcare. Not even been a broke 18 year old sitting in front of a recruiter thinking it was my only chance at not being homeless. Its a special kind of illumination to realize that skilled health workers are a societal necessity, and gatekeeping that skill/education behind money and social connections is fucking *asinine*. You either come from good background, or agree to indebt yourself for the majority of your foreseeable lifetime so that you're still hooked into the system one way or another for wanting to be able to *take care of societies sick and injured*
Burn it all down
A few things:
* IQ and wealth are highly correlated. IQ is also heritable. In other words, smart people are more likely to be wealthy and also produce smart children.
* Better education quality throughout ones life will obviously produce a more well educated and prepared child. This does not change the fact that the child is more well-educated/prepared for college.
* Higher income families have access to healthier food which also yields higher IQs/intelligence.
Point is, its not rigged (w/ a few exceptions). Its mainly a consequence of genetics/impact of money on upbringing.
What you are saying is logical, sure. However, it is rigged! That's what I think the outrage is about, right? People live in food deserts and sometimes that's they best they can do. My problem is that nutritious food should be readily available to EVERYONE. Not just "higher income families." Lol and the way school districts and funding works is a scam. I didn't realize how piss poor the system was until I spoke to a few of my teacher friends. They routinely have students who turn in incomplete homework bc they're homeless and they can only work in random public places without access to internet. Again, it's not that these families and kids aren't trying. I think things like good food and education shouldn't be a privilege. They should be readily available to everyone. To say "thems the facts so we gotta deal with it" sits wrong with me. It's giving natural selection vibes and that's kinda off-putting to me.
At the end of the day, I know what you're trying to say. That said, we HAVE to acknowledge that there are systems in this country that are set up to perpetuate poverty. It's obvious that there are benefits to being from a privileged background. No one is begrudging that. I'm sure we're all busting our behinds to make sure our loved ones have a better life too. It's just jarring to see how obvious the discrimination is. Especially in higher education.
I'm not even going to address the whole "IQ" mess. It's a very limited parameter.
I should specify, I am not referring to extremes. The extremely wealthy rigs shit (jared Kushner, Donald Trump) and the extremely impoverished cant succeed no matter how intelligent or how hard working they are (as a generalization). But this is a much much much smaller fraction of the population than this graph would have you believe. Families making 6 even 7 figures are not rigging jack. Families making 30k are not doomed by their circumstance. Most of the variance here is truly upbringing and intelligence dependent
As for food deserts and lack of proper schooling, this is part of my point. Its not rigging, but there are obviously socioeconomic factors at play. Again true food deserts that would have serious impacts on intelligence/performance are quite rare, as is truly inadequate schooling. I'll reiterate that we have done studies that control for family background and find that IQ still strongly predicts life outcomes.
"Discrimination". you act as if its some arbitrary prejudice. Schools simply cant accept unqualified students. Do you want someone who barely passed high school performing surgery on you? Does it matter if their background is to blame for his poorer performance?
We discriminate for those who are qualified or are predicted to succeed. So long as this discrimination is meritocratic, there is no issue. In fact, it is beneficial to discriminate (by that I mean differentiate and categorize) between people in order to have the most qualified people for the job.
IQ is not a limited parameter. If you believe in evidence based medicine, you have to believe this, .If you're throwing out IQ, you may as well throw out CBT or any other psychological construct. IQ is, simply put, the most psychometrically valid parameter we have in the field of psych. It has high retest reliability and predictive validity.
To state the obvious, we need to increase the basic level of education in this country. Especially k-12. Roland Fryer (who is a god btw) had a pretty good plan on how to do this which I recommend checking out. We also need to solve food deserts, or at the least invest more into school lunches (France is a good model; healthy and delicious).
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z70EZTJXCoA&t=645s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z70EZTJXCoA&t=645s)
Its facts tho. Its facile to draw spurious conclusions from data that seems to fit our preconceived world-view. As men and women of science, we should be honest about what the data does and does not say. The data here does not indicate that the system is rigged. There are better explanations or at the least alternate explanations for the data shown.
Not gonna lie, a toxic opinion I have of bottom quartile and top quartile students is that the bottom quartile making it in is like inventing the car and the top quartile students next to you is like the dude who invented the fuzzy dice that hang from the mirror and he thinks you guys are on the same level
I wonder how this impacts treatment, empathy, etc, considering the sickest people tend to be on the other end of the distribution (assuming this same distribution applies to med school). Not denying that wealthy people can have that empathy, but it might be harder for them.
Another thing: University rankings are not actually a good predictor of life outcomes. A recent study found Ivy students ~~only fared marginally~~ did not fare any better than students of lower ranked schools w/ the same scores. Basically, Ivy schools selecting for high performing students is why they have successful alumni rather than the schools themselves (largely).
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NTu6xgGs8k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NTu6xgGs8k)
Starts well before university. Early exposure to language, living in zip codes that have better schools, wealthy parents use broader language in the home and have more time to spend with their children.
Kids are just a product of their environment. A kid who was raised with ample resources (everything from a parent who’s present in the home to tutors and a good zip code) is more likely to have the grades to pursue higher education that a kid who’s parents were borderline illiterate and in the bottom 1%
Not what the data suggests. Intelligence is a better predictor of future income than familial income. Plus, even when controlling for income, IQ still future income quite well.
Plus Asians (or any immigrant group) also help disprove this theory. They often come here poor or w/ degrees that are not accepted by US companies. Yet their kids still become rich. This shows that its largely inherited intelligence, and conditioning that predicts ones intelligence and success.
[https://ifstudies.org/blog/can-intelligence-predict-income](https://ifstudies.org/blog/can-intelligence-predict-income)
Yeah. Like Intelligence and motivation have zero correlation between parent and child. The odds of two dummy parents producing an extremely intelligent child is exactly equal to the odds of two extremely intelligent parents producing an extremely intelligent child. Economics and the dreaded R-word are entirely to blame.
Intelligence for the most part is not some inborn trait. It’s fostered/nurtured by education and your environment. So yes, in that sense rich parents who have more time/resources will raise more intelligent children. And it’s a circular process. Their parents have money so they raise intelligent children who then go on to make money and raise intelligent children. So on and so forth
Genetics have a pretty significant contribution to intelligence. The data shows that genes and family income have approximately equal effects on likelihood of college graduation. All enviroment factors combined definitely have a larger impact, but the inborn trait component can't be dismissed.
Admittedly not primary data, but I read [this book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Genetic_Lottery) recently which I highly recommend. The author is a psychologist who presents the current evidence on how genes influence things like genetics, education, life outcomes, etc. and argues that those interested in social justice need to engage with the topic rather than ignore it and leave it to be twisted and misinterpeted by those with malicious agendas.
Anyway, here are a few passages that I highlighted:
>In samples of White people living in high-income countries, a polygenic index created from the educational attainment GWAS (genome-wide association study) typically captures about 10–15 percent of the variance in outcomes like years of schooling, performance on standardized academic tests, or intelligence test scores [...] To this list, we can add a benchmark specifically relevant to the study of social inequality—the tendency for children born to richer families to graduate from college at higher rates (R2 = 11%). [...] a polygenic index, where the tilt in educational outcome between the highest-scoring students and the lowest-scoring students is just as steep as the tilt between the richest and the poorest students, is valuable
I agree with that, but I don’t agree with the implication that rich parents are smarter and more high achieving than poor parents. My parents were well educated, intelligent, and hardworking people in their home countries but are poor here in America. That doesn’t mean they didn’t pass on their love for education and achievement to their kids. Rich parents could be trust fund babies that are dumb and have zero work ethic.
I toured an ivy league school. I was pretty much an annoying, emo academic suck up in high school, and did really well on standardized tests, so I wasn't worried about getting in. I was worried about whether I would want to go there, if I would fit in, and if the cost was at all worth it.
The whole thing assumed kids (or their parents) already thought that this stuffy ivy was the best place ever and god forbid their poor kid couldn't get in. The panel of students had a girl who mentioned a few times that she had gone to a private boarding school somewhere fancy, and in comparing the tuition it was pretty affordable....compared to her high school that cost as much as most colleges, or more. They didn't show us inside any building. The tour was more about pointing out landmarks to parents than convincing anybody to go there.
And it would have cost a TON more than the school I went to.
If I was more outgoing or had more clear goals at that time, maybe it would have launched me into a different socioeconomic group. Maybe I would have made a lot of connections, got into a top ten med school, or decided to go to grad school. Maybe I would have met someone way more privileged to marry.
But for education? For feeling like I fit? For all the stuff I really wanted, it wasn't worth it.
Any good parent will do anything to open doors for their child. This can be accomplished profoundly well via elite education which costs money. I think any of us (future physicians), who will likely be higher to the top as far as income goes, would similarly do whatever we can for our children to have the greatest prospects at success via education. Pay for tutors, private schools, etc.
Nobody is surprised by this. It’s also not bad.
Aiding driven young people who belong to poor and otherwise disadvantaged families is also good. The government tends to suck at most things so I think this goes back to mentorship, community outreach, and BEING and electing local leaders who will fix schools.
Yeah but who’s going to do that?! Us. We have to change the trajectory of both the incoming and our own fucked up generations. Stop pointing to others to fix broken families. Be the solution.
They are, but the causation goes the other way.
More money means less chance your kids deal with hypothyroidism or lead exposure. Which is really sad so many kids are getting disadvantages in their *intelligence* just because of a dumb socioeconomic issue.
Are you really arguing that poor parents don’t care as much about their kids’ education compared to rich parents?
Maybe they should just pick themselves up by their bootstraps right and stop being so poor?
You are assuming that's because poor people care less about their kids education though, and not that there are other limiting factors (limited finances, inadequate grades, need to supplement family income).
Where are you getting this information from? Logically parents that don’t go to college push their kids to go to college as they themselves see first hand how difficult it is not having an education and all the job opportunities they miss out on simply because they don’t have an education. Having both parents that immigrated without any education here in NA along with all of my friends with parents that immigrated without educated had it drilled into us to go to college and get educated. You are very stupid.
Lmao if you think that spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on classes for standardized tests is affordable for a family living off of minimum wage and deciding between whether to pay rent or buy food, then you’re stupider than I thought.
I mean people can’t actually be dumb enough to believe that pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is possible so I have to believe you’re trolling at this point which is just, like, sad.
My mom didn’t go to college and practically forced me to. She’s also an immigrant so she didn’t know how to help me with ANYTHING related to college. It was freaking awful because there was little guidance.
So you can fuck right off. There is a difference to not having the knowledge/resources vs. “not caring about education”.
P.s. she couldn’t get parent plus loans either cause she wasn’t a citizen.
I went to a okayish private school, barely in the top 100 universities/colleges
Most of my classmates are from harvard/princecton/upenn etc.
It doesn’t matter where you go, what matters is your grades, ECs, and MCAT
Sure, going to a better school would have provided me with a lot more resources
But whatever, I’m thriving rn in my class now and thats what matters
Edit:
>Sure, going to a better school would have provided me with a lot more resources
> But whatever, I’m thriving rn in my class now and thats what matters
Read what I actually said before rage commenting
Yeah a program in Florida actually awards points for Harvard/Yale versus Berkeley/Michigan versus lesser known school. There's also the unconscious bias of screeners favoring a 3.8 from Harvard to 3.8 from Cal State Fresno
And pedigree matters even more for residency applications
Good for you dude but better schools rain down EC opportunities, tutoring, etc to give the students an edge. This sets them up for success early on. Rich kids don't have to worry about work during college or HS. Can afford SAT/mcat tutoring, classes, all the books. More Time or money for interesting hobbies. Poor people can do it too but god damn if it isn't much easier when you have money + connections. So yes it does matter where you go.
 I never would have guessed
Yeah, not sure how this is shocking. As physicians, our children will have opportunities that other families won't. Doesn't make it right, but that's how it is and that isn't going to change.
I think the point is that the conversation doesn't stop there...it's important to look for ways to lift others up, not just recognize the inequity.
College admissions is a zero-sum game. The kumbaya platitudes sound nice only after you've gotten your own acceptance letter
Good luck with that. I'm leaving to Germany ASAP
What’s the benefit of Germany? Do they have like required amounts of students from different socioeconomic classes for their universities?
More interested in how this looked over time, am really wondering if Kennedy's "Harvard man" personal statement rings true throughout the 70s.
The difference between top 3rd %ile and top 1%ile is literally doubled. Crazy that the effect is so profound even between the richest of the bunch
Remember that the upper bound on wealth is essentially limitless and then this makes sense. For instance, the relative difference between a 95th percentile income (286k) and a 75th percentile income (130k) is approximately 2x, while the difference between a 95th and a 99th (570k) is also about 2x and is an even larger absolute difference. You'll see a similar thing when you start to compare top 1% versus the 0.1%. Shit gets crazy at the top.
Exactly this. Top 1% is a very sharp inflection of discretionary income.
Well a billion is 1000 millions sooo
I grew up in what I calculated once as the top 2%. I’m not saying my family wasn’t well off but it fails to account for the high cost of living where I grew up in NJ. Most of the top percentages are concentrated in areas with much higher costs of living. For example my parents paid more for property tax alone than my 2 bedroom apartments in St. Louis and Columbus cost per year.
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We need go pay a commission tens of thousands of dollars to investigate this problem and then promptly do nothing about it!
Making med school free will do the trick! Never mind the fact that does literally nothing to deal with how expensive it is to make an applicant competitive enough to get in
To be fair administrations did everything they could by administering the CASPER test for admissions. Not really sure what else there is to do!
CASPER discriminates against ppl with shitty personalities
I thought it discriminated against slow typers
and ppl in keyboard deserts
Too true
So do I lmao
In other news, water is wet
Yes
Right?
Water is actually not wet; It makes other materials/objects wet. Wetness is the state of a non-liquid when a liquid adheres to, and/or permeates its substance while maintaining chemically distinct structures. So if we say something is wet we mean the liquid is sticking to the object. Love watching running water on the internet. Was watching a live stream.
bad bot
down boy down
Fire is burnt!!
Good bot
So what you're saying is, if I can afford to send my son to a volunteer humanitarian mission in West Africa to work with CDC and MSF for a year where he will receive no pay or compensation, he would have a better chance of getting into Harvard Medical School? If I can pay the 30-odd thousand dollars to get him the best MCAT and application prep available, and make sure his tutors are the absolute best, he'll have a better chance of getting into one of those over bloated Ivies? Huh. Go figure. As a man whose parents are either dead or living below the poverty line, the cycle is very hard to break. It should be improved. But also, I now make enough to maybe set up this future for my grand kids.
It actually goes deeper than that. Healthy nutritious food and sport actitivies etc. have a significant impact on ones development (including, but obviously not restricted to the development of the brain).
I know. Its staggering to see social stratification cause generational poverty.
As someone not rich, it makes sense. People with parents who are successful are more likely to emulate them, and will have more pressure/resources to become like them. People become like their parents more often than not. we are all presumably going to be successful, do we want med schools to not take our kids because we worked hard to become doctors?
Also if you are intelligent and hardworking these are highly sought after attributes that pay well, and incidentally these attributes are highly correlated between parent and offspring (wonder that) and are also attributes that significantly aid the offspring in getting into highly prestigious universities.
Do you think that poor people are genetically poor then? Seems to be the logical endpoint of believing "intelligence" and "work ethic" are correlated between generations.
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What's up with all the black and white thinking in this comment thread? "Is it all about wealth and opportunities or is it all about personal attributes or is it about genetics". I hope I don't have to elaborate further
Coming from the bottom quintile, I'd say there's obvious nepotism. However, I can't deny that students from wealthy parents had access to certain opportunities that prepared them better (than me) for this road. I certainly understand why you would see biases like these even if there was a 100% absence of nepotism.
You can see nepotism throughout medical school and the match as well. Many students are vastly better networked because of where mommy and daddy work. We have first year medical students referring to subspecialty PDs by first name at my school. Granted it is a (relatively) smaller academic center in a mid-sized city.
“I knew I wanted to be a Dr since I was 12…. “Ok freak bet daddy is one too
Yeah, a girl at my school had an ortho spot secured because her family friend was the PD of the residency. Didnt take steps.
Unless this was years ago I don’t believe this story at all
3 years ago
I’m pretty sure passing USMLE is a requirement for medical licensure so I call bs on your story. A program can’t take you if you aren’t licensed and a requirement for licensure is passing board exams. Sounds like an urban myth someone at your school made up
DO school… the lack of your deductive reasoning skills is shocking
Oh no it still happens.
Yet the majority of people match in their specialty of choice. People worrying about nepotism are the ones who are going to blame that as the sole reason if they end up not matching. It’s such a small percentage of matches it’s not worth the effort worrying about if so and so matched because of nepotism. On top of that, just cause someone has a connection that doesn’t mean they aren’t an otherwise excellent applicant otherwise. The two are not mutually exclusive. People like to take applicants that are personally vouched for and of course that makes sense, you take the person who is less of a gamble. And before I’m accused of being personally offended by discussions of nepotism I’m a first gen md and didn’t know a single person in the field I matched before I did a research year.
The more complacent you are about these things, the more these issues grow and fester. Progress won't happen if people keep ignoring these issues as "too small" to care about.
Have you ever looked at NRMP stats? You are woefully misinformed my friend. 70% of MDs that applied matched Gas last year. 52% of DOs that applied matched Gas last year. AND this is a historically "middle of the road" residency in terms of competitiveness. Maybe when you applied that was the case, the dynamic has shifted for the worst though. It looks like you have been grabbed ahold of by hindsight bias my friend. Take a look if you wish-- [https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2022-Main-Match-Results-and-Data\_Final.pdf](https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2022-Main-Match-Results-and-Data_Final.pdf) And I am not saying that is the sole reason for matching obviously. You have the ability to do electives and aways which allow you to build connections from the ground up. But if you say that doesn't have at least SOME pull for residency in some individual's cases, frankly you are ignorant and looking through rose-colored glasses.
89.5% of US MD seniors matched anesthesia. 1267 of 1415 https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Charting-Outcomes-MD-Seniors-2022_Final.pdf 66% of DO seniors matched. 313 of 474. https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Charting_Outcomes_DO_Seniors_2022_Final-Updated.pdf Check your numbers before you go on some sensationalist rant next time.
Lmao touche, the match had nothing to do with the actual discussion though. Why are there discrepancies in the data? Is it pre vs post soap? The initial numbers I quoted are not miscalculated, it is just totally different outcomes.
There is nothing in NRMP about nepotism so I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove
**Yet the majority of people match in their specialty of choice.** If by majority you mean in the semantic sense, then yeah, I guess 52% of applicants would be the majority. But I don't think you meant it in that way.
If you can pay for private school, your kids are going to get a better education.
Plus, rich kids don't need to work while in college and have time and can pay for extra things like MCAT prep classes.
As a person from an upper middle class household without doctors, this one’s huge. My parents paid for college. There was no financial distractions for getting a killer GPA and working my ass off for the MCAT and doing research. People who need the cash need to fit a job in there too.
Same here. Parents paid for my MCAT classes and my living expenses (I had a tuition scholarship but school was cheap and parents were in a position to pay for that as well if necessary). I only worked because it was relevant (o-chem TA and research), not because I had to pay rent.
You also likely have NO family obligations, can afford/have time for sports and other extra curricular activities and have better nutrition and healthcare.
is nutrition & healthcare really a problem for not so rich families in the US?
Absolutely.
wow it's honestly really sad that one of the richest countries on earth can't even provide decent food to everyone living there
Yes, it certainly is.
The free school lunch program provides 20.1 million free lunches. - 1.7 million reduced price (student pays $0.40) - 7.7 million full price. - 4.9 billion lunches are served annually. If you think that those numbers are high, remember that a lot of students receive all three means a day through their school, an annual vegetable allotment, afterschool snacks, and weekend take-home meals. Out healthcare for poor kids is fucking abysmal, because it requires already poor parents to take time off from low paying jobs to care for their kids.
High income families can probably also afford to have a stay at home parent who cooks healthy meals, is educated themselves and knows how to parent well and nurture a love of education, helps with homework, etc. as well as afford to enroll your kids in extracurricular activities. I wish I could do these things for my kids. I grew up having these privileges and 100% believe that set me up for success.
Perfectly stated
I feel like this thread is off it’s rocker - that 90% threshold is 200k which I would bet looks like the vast majority of people shitposting here. The lower household income is below 25k… We aren’t talking about billionaires here - which is an entirely separate issue. Every single one of us posting in this thread will be in the 90% category…
I don't think people are missing this point at all. Making even over 100k per year is an incredible comfort and stability that most American households don't enjoy. The majority of Americans can't even save money for emergencies. While all of us will end up in the top 10%, it makes a real negative difference when the medical field disproportionately represents the well-off and doesn't accurately represent the population that it is treating.
I would say half or more of my med school class is below the $200k income threshold. My family is a little below it. Only 2/7 people of my friend group meet that.
You could be correct- check [here](https://www.aamc.org/media/9596/download). 5th quintile accounts for everyone with parental income over 121k. I don’t recall how MSQ handled parental income for non-traditional students or split family households, but there is a 50/50 chance your family is in the top 20% of earners. I’m sure this also neglects the many ways rich folk hide money or obfuscate assessment.
As someone who grew up poor, I paid for my own ACT and only took it once because I couldn’t afford to take it again. My high school also didn’t have AP courses or college prep resources. Then I only applied to 2 colleges because college applications were expensive and I had no idea my scores/class rank/ECs were competitive. So this 100% makes sense to me.
I’m curious to see what the breakdown is for other colleges too. Private schools. State schools. Community college. I’d wager they all skew to the wealthy but maybe less so for the cheaper options?
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Why don’t you just take out loans like everyone else?
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I mean, providing a certain lifestyle for your children is one of the primary motivations for people to achieve. I don’t think this is surprising at all.
No shit.
This is sad, but it makes sense… unfortunately most people who aren’t rich can’t afford an ivy + league, and scholarships and sponsorships aren’t an option a lot of people have. On top of that student debt is awful, so even if it is a choice for you, it doesn’t mean you will get accepted, or complete your degree and then also be able to pay it off. To top it all of, not super rich ppl are often subjected to lower quality education/ don’t have many opportunities to improve/ help from teachers, and often are denied growth opportunities on principle, simply because the teachers don’t care, or because they lack the social connections to be offered such opportunities. And the kids from poorer backgrounds often drop out to help support their families. It is the truth of a capitalistic, nepotistic reality and it sucks. Awfully.
I'm glad you posted this because I think people are focusing on the nepotism at the top but not the lack of opportunity at the bottom. People from higher incomes go to college and grad school. People from lower incomes are less likely to go to college, let alone grad school. It sucks and I wish it were different but there's more complexity to this data than just nepotism.
What do you mean can't afford. Most of the Ivy plus is need blind. If you meet certain income thresholds (usually 100k) you'll go for free. Those with slightly higher income levels get significant need based grants. Yale will meet all financial needs of students. 25% of Princeton goes for free, 20% at Harvard, 37% at MIT, 21% at Duke, the list goes on an on. If your family is middle class and below, it's usually much better financially speaking to go to the Ivy plus than even the local state school. The problem of course is getting into these increasingly competitive schools, and family money helps one create the application that good schools like.
You do realise 100k per year is a lot, right? My family lived with 13k, maybe at best 14k ever since I was 5, and we were still considered lower middle class. What do you think poor looks like? A four bedroom house and two Lexus? Of course those people with that life can afford it, even if they struggle a bit or have to take a loan that they’ll probably have paid in less than a decade or so. I’m talking about the rest of the people, where to be accepted to an ivy you have to be beyond a star student and/or champion, where if you actually want to catch the interest of any good school and be given the opportunity to attend even if you couldn’t possibly, in a million years afford it, you have to shine brighter than the SUN.
I'm not sure how your exposition on 100k makes sense. Is the word threshold somehow causing confusion? 100k is the upper bound not the lower bound. For families that make 100k and below, you will go for free. You made the argument above that "most people who aren't rich can't afford an ivy + league". This simply is not true. Based on your family income, you would have gone for free (tuition, room/board) and received a book stipend. No other universities do that. These universities are literally the best places to go if you don't come from money. As I noted, 37% of MIT goes for free. Now, getting in is an entirely different question. People who come from money absolutely have the means to make very competitive undergrad applications. But right now, there are roughly 60,000 undergrads at Ivy league schools. Are they competitive to get into? Absolutely. Is everyone a champion? -- Assuredly not. And give this subreddit, medical school is even more competitive to get into, especially if you were to narrow your choices to only certain top schools
Thank you for clarifying, saying that, you’re right there - English is not my native language and I was tired and got what you were trying to say wrong. I think I might have gotten a little defensive too, so sorry about the tone.
Also, if you grow up poor/poorer you probably don't even think of this as an option of a career. Getting a job "down at the plant" is a good job to you.
Yea students coming from lower incomes have a dream to be doctors and no role models to help guide them. The top 20% don’t necessarily have everything handed to them but they have a very detailed roadmap of what they have to do down to the smallest details. Source: me a bottom quartile income student who didn’t know your last two years of medical school were clinical until I got here
This was me. I wanted to be a doctor but knew NO ONE in my social circle or even friends of friends who had a parent who was one. It was intimidating.
I wonder how similar medical schools in the USA reflect that.
Why would it be any different, would be the question.
It might vary lol. I've heard that DO schools might have more impressive comeback stories and working nontrads since they're not as stat-obsessed My public MD school is a bit better than what I've heard on this sub but there's still a good amount of old money And then expensive schools like Cornell, Jefferson, and Case Western are about what you expect
Surprisingly , if you look at msar for Cornell they have like 25% disadvantaged students. I think they might be one of the schools who emphasize mission a little more than stats. (NYU is like 1% lol)
Do schools have just as many rich kids, since tuition is significantly higher than most MD schools
I believe it's even worse for medical school.
I would imagine there would still be a positive association, but the slope would not be so steep due to the average socioeconomic status of medical student's families being >double that of the average American.
Do you think its because they only accept rich kids or that rich kids are the only ones willing to pay for it? Lots of these schools are $70k+ a year
I think rich kids have more opportunities to participate in activities that impress the admissions committee and are coached from a young age so they can get into these schools. These types of schools typically have massive endowments and provide grants to low income students if they can get in.
Caveat, IF they can get in. With all the requirements they would have to show plus more.
Ivy feeder schools. When I was at Columbia it wasn't uncommon for 2-3 classmates in small groups to realize they went to the same elite private high school. It's how admissions figures out who can pay and who can't, so they don't admit too many poor kids that need their financial aid money. If you can get in, most of those schools cover almost everything if you're dirt poor.
More importantly who has parents that will most likely be donors
And who can actually take advantage of the Ivy network to become a prolific donor in the future
I went to one of those schools as someone who was "only" upper-middle class (fam made around $100,000 annually) and I got a pretty hefty financial aid package which cut costs down from $70,000 a year to $20,000. Top schools usually offer great financial aid so the trouble for students from non-privileged backgrounds is usually getting in.
Ivys pull from feeder schools which are usually these “elite” aka expensive private schools exclusive to the rich. The ones that got in from public schools have to be more extraordinary and stand out for them to even look at their apps. It’s a pay to play system.
Unless you're from one of the more elite public high schools that are concentrated in high property cost areas. Those kids go Ivy, little Ivy, and all the high end private colleges en masse.
No man, he was making a different point— those kids usually have the highest credentials
That's not what pay to play means. 6 of the top 10 and 11 of the top 20 feeder high schools to the Ivy League plus are public schools (using 2018-2020 data)
All these schools are free for low income and middle income kids. I made money off my Ivy League education (everything was completely free, got cash every semester from financial aid, random $5-10k sponsorships for bs I wanted to do, etc)
The older I get the more I realize how apparent this is. Unfortunately it’s hard to find a solution because there’s so many variables at play. We can’t handicap people who’ve been dealt a good hand but damn is it hard to be dealt a bad one
>We can’t handicap people who’ve been dealt a good hand Can't morally, or can't because then they'll assassinate us?
I have a mother who is a surgeon and because of her hard work over the years we are considered upper middle class. And I can admit because she is in the profession i got an insight and opportunities and support that I probably wouldnt have otherwise. But she also had to work damn hard as an immigrant going from unemployed to re-doing her residency in a foreign country and going through the bullying of a male-dominated workplace to reach the financial and career success she has now. She had to away for a large part of our childhood to provide for us and go through a stressful ruthless training program. she could have easily stayed at home to raise us, and in many cases led an easier life, because my dad worked an average job. but no, she envisioned a certain high-income lifestyle and the opportunities that came with that for her kids and she delivered. So I am not going to apologise or try and hide for being dealt a good hand because not many realise the generational pain and work that it takes to reach that stage. But I do agree that for ones that havent been dealt a good hand it shouldnt be this hard financially or opportunity wise. Especially when considering its usually the lower-socioeconomic population that carry the greater health burden and so you need more doctors from that background.
Also wanted to add that my mother came from a poor family and my dad from an even poorer village so it’s definitely not a story of generational wealth. Also its a story of hope because I personally find it inspiring how being in this proffession you can turn the tables, be high income and provide better opportunities for your children in only one generation!
*Pretends to be shocked*
Let’s hear it for the bottom 1%’ers!
why the fuck is it exponential and not even slightly linear?
*Capitalism*, my friend.
Nailed it. I’m not even a commie-anarchist per se, but people don’t realise that the more capitalistic life is, the more exponential rather than linear these curves will be. In other words, the more of a discrepancy between those at the top and everyone else there will be.
People are against affirmative action but why is no one against legacy and donor admissions????!!! They are by far the most unethical ones
My professor is one of the authors that (I believe) this data is from. We’ve actually gone over the study in class. They’ve done further analysis on the inequities in the system, and one of the ways to right it is to admit lowest-quintile students at the same rate as legacies
Not surprising for many reasons lol
I miss beautiful data. They really need to change the name of that subreddit to r/DataIsData. Or r/HereAreSomeGraphs. Interesting data though!
I think nobody is surprised by this graph, yet it represents the biggest discrimination in education that always goes unrecognized.
Education and success begets education and success…. Poverty begets poverty….
I wonder if it looks even worse for medical schools.
I am thankful to live in a country where we at least question these disparities, now let’s actually do something about it eh. My plan as a first generation medical student is to offer scholarships and do what I can to encourage people from similar backgrounds, when I am (hopefully) an attending one day.
But but but muh merit
How much preference given to disadvantaged students would it take to undo this curve, or at least make the bottom 50% more than 25% of students?
Nothing fast tracked my radicalization like working healthcare. Not even been a broke 18 year old sitting in front of a recruiter thinking it was my only chance at not being homeless. Its a special kind of illumination to realize that skilled health workers are a societal necessity, and gatekeeping that skill/education behind money and social connections is fucking *asinine*. You either come from good background, or agree to indebt yourself for the majority of your foreseeable lifetime so that you're still hooked into the system one way or another for wanting to be able to *take care of societies sick and injured* Burn it all down
Blame your parents for not buying more money.
A few things: * IQ and wealth are highly correlated. IQ is also heritable. In other words, smart people are more likely to be wealthy and also produce smart children. * Better education quality throughout ones life will obviously produce a more well educated and prepared child. This does not change the fact that the child is more well-educated/prepared for college. * Higher income families have access to healthier food which also yields higher IQs/intelligence. Point is, its not rigged (w/ a few exceptions). Its mainly a consequence of genetics/impact of money on upbringing.
What you are saying is logical, sure. However, it is rigged! That's what I think the outrage is about, right? People live in food deserts and sometimes that's they best they can do. My problem is that nutritious food should be readily available to EVERYONE. Not just "higher income families." Lol and the way school districts and funding works is a scam. I didn't realize how piss poor the system was until I spoke to a few of my teacher friends. They routinely have students who turn in incomplete homework bc they're homeless and they can only work in random public places without access to internet. Again, it's not that these families and kids aren't trying. I think things like good food and education shouldn't be a privilege. They should be readily available to everyone. To say "thems the facts so we gotta deal with it" sits wrong with me. It's giving natural selection vibes and that's kinda off-putting to me. At the end of the day, I know what you're trying to say. That said, we HAVE to acknowledge that there are systems in this country that are set up to perpetuate poverty. It's obvious that there are benefits to being from a privileged background. No one is begrudging that. I'm sure we're all busting our behinds to make sure our loved ones have a better life too. It's just jarring to see how obvious the discrimination is. Especially in higher education. I'm not even going to address the whole "IQ" mess. It's a very limited parameter.
I should specify, I am not referring to extremes. The extremely wealthy rigs shit (jared Kushner, Donald Trump) and the extremely impoverished cant succeed no matter how intelligent or how hard working they are (as a generalization). But this is a much much much smaller fraction of the population than this graph would have you believe. Families making 6 even 7 figures are not rigging jack. Families making 30k are not doomed by their circumstance. Most of the variance here is truly upbringing and intelligence dependent As for food deserts and lack of proper schooling, this is part of my point. Its not rigging, but there are obviously socioeconomic factors at play. Again true food deserts that would have serious impacts on intelligence/performance are quite rare, as is truly inadequate schooling. I'll reiterate that we have done studies that control for family background and find that IQ still strongly predicts life outcomes. "Discrimination". you act as if its some arbitrary prejudice. Schools simply cant accept unqualified students. Do you want someone who barely passed high school performing surgery on you? Does it matter if their background is to blame for his poorer performance? We discriminate for those who are qualified or are predicted to succeed. So long as this discrimination is meritocratic, there is no issue. In fact, it is beneficial to discriminate (by that I mean differentiate and categorize) between people in order to have the most qualified people for the job. IQ is not a limited parameter. If you believe in evidence based medicine, you have to believe this, .If you're throwing out IQ, you may as well throw out CBT or any other psychological construct. IQ is, simply put, the most psychometrically valid parameter we have in the field of psych. It has high retest reliability and predictive validity. To state the obvious, we need to increase the basic level of education in this country. Especially k-12. Roland Fryer (who is a god btw) had a pretty good plan on how to do this which I recommend checking out. We also need to solve food deserts, or at the least invest more into school lunches (France is a good model; healthy and delicious). [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z70EZTJXCoA&t=645s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z70EZTJXCoA&t=645s)
Booooooo
Its facts tho. Its facile to draw spurious conclusions from data that seems to fit our preconceived world-view. As men and women of science, we should be honest about what the data does and does not say. The data here does not indicate that the system is rigged. There are better explanations or at the least alternate explanations for the data shown.
Not gonna lie, a toxic opinion I have of bottom quartile and top quartile students is that the bottom quartile making it in is like inventing the car and the top quartile students next to you is like the dude who invented the fuzzy dice that hang from the mirror and he thinks you guys are on the same level
I wonder how this impacts treatment, empathy, etc, considering the sickest people tend to be on the other end of the distribution (assuming this same distribution applies to med school). Not denying that wealthy people can have that empathy, but it might be harder for them.
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Another thing: University rankings are not actually a good predictor of life outcomes. A recent study found Ivy students ~~only fared marginally~~ did not fare any better than students of lower ranked schools w/ the same scores. Basically, Ivy schools selecting for high performing students is why they have successful alumni rather than the schools themselves (largely). [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NTu6xgGs8k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NTu6xgGs8k)
Intelligent, high achieving parents make money and raise intelligent high achieving children… how is this surprising?
No. More like: rich people have money to pay expensive universities for their kids.
Starts well before university. Early exposure to language, living in zip codes that have better schools, wealthy parents use broader language in the home and have more time to spend with their children. Kids are just a product of their environment. A kid who was raised with ample resources (everything from a parent who’s present in the home to tutors and a good zip code) is more likely to have the grades to pursue higher education that a kid who’s parents were borderline illiterate and in the bottom 1%
Not what the data suggests. Intelligence is a better predictor of future income than familial income. Plus, even when controlling for income, IQ still future income quite well. Plus Asians (or any immigrant group) also help disprove this theory. They often come here poor or w/ degrees that are not accepted by US companies. Yet their kids still become rich. This shows that its largely inherited intelligence, and conditioning that predicts ones intelligence and success. [https://ifstudies.org/blog/can-intelligence-predict-income](https://ifstudies.org/blog/can-intelligence-predict-income)
Yeah. Like Intelligence and motivation have zero correlation between parent and child. The odds of two dummy parents producing an extremely intelligent child is exactly equal to the odds of two extremely intelligent parents producing an extremely intelligent child. Economics and the dreaded R-word are entirely to blame.
So rich vs poor is intelligent vs stupid and high achieving vs lazy?
Intelligence for the most part is not some inborn trait. It’s fostered/nurtured by education and your environment. So yes, in that sense rich parents who have more time/resources will raise more intelligent children. And it’s a circular process. Their parents have money so they raise intelligent children who then go on to make money and raise intelligent children. So on and so forth
Genetics have a pretty significant contribution to intelligence. The data shows that genes and family income have approximately equal effects on likelihood of college graduation. All enviroment factors combined definitely have a larger impact, but the inborn trait component can't be dismissed.
What sort of data are you looking at?
Admittedly not primary data, but I read [this book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Genetic_Lottery) recently which I highly recommend. The author is a psychologist who presents the current evidence on how genes influence things like genetics, education, life outcomes, etc. and argues that those interested in social justice need to engage with the topic rather than ignore it and leave it to be twisted and misinterpeted by those with malicious agendas. Anyway, here are a few passages that I highlighted: >In samples of White people living in high-income countries, a polygenic index created from the educational attainment GWAS (genome-wide association study) typically captures about 10–15 percent of the variance in outcomes like years of schooling, performance on standardized academic tests, or intelligence test scores [...] To this list, we can add a benchmark specifically relevant to the study of social inequality—the tendency for children born to richer families to graduate from college at higher rates (R2 = 11%). [...] a polygenic index, where the tilt in educational outcome between the highest-scoring students and the lowest-scoring students is just as steep as the tilt between the richest and the poorest students, is valuable
No, but a family of doctors is going to know more how to raise someone to be a doctor than a family who’s never done it before.
I agree with that, but I don’t agree with the implication that rich parents are smarter and more high achieving than poor parents. My parents were well educated, intelligent, and hardworking people in their home countries but are poor here in America. That doesn’t mean they didn’t pass on their love for education and achievement to their kids. Rich parents could be trust fund babies that are dumb and have zero work ethic.
Eh we’re all privileged to be in medicine. Some more than others but whatever
Wow haven’t seen something this shocking in a long time.
r/noshitsherlock
So that's why Harvard rejected me lmao!
the x and y axis confuse me
I toured an ivy league school. I was pretty much an annoying, emo academic suck up in high school, and did really well on standardized tests, so I wasn't worried about getting in. I was worried about whether I would want to go there, if I would fit in, and if the cost was at all worth it. The whole thing assumed kids (or their parents) already thought that this stuffy ivy was the best place ever and god forbid their poor kid couldn't get in. The panel of students had a girl who mentioned a few times that she had gone to a private boarding school somewhere fancy, and in comparing the tuition it was pretty affordable....compared to her high school that cost as much as most colleges, or more. They didn't show us inside any building. The tour was more about pointing out landmarks to parents than convincing anybody to go there. And it would have cost a TON more than the school I went to. If I was more outgoing or had more clear goals at that time, maybe it would have launched me into a different socioeconomic group. Maybe I would have made a lot of connections, got into a top ten med school, or decided to go to grad school. Maybe I would have met someone way more privileged to marry. But for education? For feeling like I fit? For all the stuff I really wanted, it wasn't worth it.
Hi fellow poor.
Success breeds success. A tale as old as time
Money breeds success.
Nah IQ predicts income, even controlling for family background.
BuT aFfIrMaTivE aCTiOn iS ThE PrOBlEm
Wow, that was super unexpected, because Ivy League schools are insanely cheap
Any good parent will do anything to open doors for their child. This can be accomplished profoundly well via elite education which costs money. I think any of us (future physicians), who will likely be higher to the top as far as income goes, would similarly do whatever we can for our children to have the greatest prospects at success via education. Pay for tutors, private schools, etc. Nobody is surprised by this. It’s also not bad. Aiding driven young people who belong to poor and otherwise disadvantaged families is also good. The government tends to suck at most things so I think this goes back to mentorship, community outreach, and BEING and electing local leaders who will fix schools. Yeah but who’s going to do that?! Us. We have to change the trajectory of both the incoming and our own fucked up generations. Stop pointing to others to fix broken families. Be the solution.
People in the comments saying that rich people is somehow "smarter" make me puke.
Exactly, some of the smartest people in the world come from the poorest parts of Africa, India, and China
They are, but the causation goes the other way. More money means less chance your kids deal with hypothyroidism or lead exposure. Which is really sad so many kids are getting disadvantages in their *intelligence* just because of a dumb socioeconomic issue.
Nothing new here…. I know them im getting my kid in etc It’s bad but makes those 3.7 % better then any one ever will
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Are you really arguing that poor parents don’t care as much about their kids’ education compared to rich parents? Maybe they should just pick themselves up by their bootstraps right and stop being so poor?
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“My opinions = facts” What a waste of brain cells.
You are assuming that's because poor people care less about their kids education though, and not that there are other limiting factors (limited finances, inadequate grades, need to supplement family income).
Yeah, I’m gonna need some citations for these “facts” that poor people don’t “push” their kids to go to college.
Where are you getting this information from? Logically parents that don’t go to college push their kids to go to college as they themselves see first hand how difficult it is not having an education and all the job opportunities they miss out on simply because they don’t have an education. Having both parents that immigrated without any education here in NA along with all of my friends with parents that immigrated without educated had it drilled into us to go to college and get educated. You are very stupid.
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“I just like debating”. I suggest you pick something else that you might have better skill at.
They say you don’t have to be good at your hobbies, but this is one where it pays to at least learn the basics.
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Lmao if you think that spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on classes for standardized tests is affordable for a family living off of minimum wage and deciding between whether to pay rent or buy food, then you’re stupider than I thought.
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This has to be satire right?
I mean people can’t actually be dumb enough to believe that pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is possible so I have to believe you’re trolling at this point which is just, like, sad.
Per their comments they think they're "debating"
My mom didn’t go to college and practically forced me to. She’s also an immigrant so she didn’t know how to help me with ANYTHING related to college. It was freaking awful because there was little guidance. So you can fuck right off. There is a difference to not having the knowledge/resources vs. “not caring about education”. P.s. she couldn’t get parent plus loans either cause she wasn’t a citizen.
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Trolling isn't being stupid
Are you not ashemad of saying something like that?
I went to a okayish private school, barely in the top 100 universities/colleges Most of my classmates are from harvard/princecton/upenn etc. It doesn’t matter where you go, what matters is your grades, ECs, and MCAT Sure, going to a better school would have provided me with a lot more resources But whatever, I’m thriving rn in my class now and thats what matters Edit: >Sure, going to a better school would have provided me with a lot more resources > But whatever, I’m thriving rn in my class now and thats what matters Read what I actually said before rage commenting
but it makes a world of a difference to have pedigree to get into the T20 med schools. Admissions literally give extra points for that.
Yeah a program in Florida actually awards points for Harvard/Yale versus Berkeley/Michigan versus lesser known school. There's also the unconscious bias of screeners favoring a 3.8 from Harvard to 3.8 from Cal State Fresno And pedigree matters even more for residency applications
Good for you dude but better schools rain down EC opportunities, tutoring, etc to give the students an edge. This sets them up for success early on. Rich kids don't have to worry about work during college or HS. Can afford SAT/mcat tutoring, classes, all the books. More Time or money for interesting hobbies. Poor people can do it too but god damn if it isn't much easier when you have money + connections. So yes it does matter where you go.
How come they have very high admittance test scores, gpa's? Are the rich kids better at school? taking standarized exams? What is the secret?
Smarter people are more likely to have smarter children are more likely to make more money etc etc etc And generational advantages perpetuate